Chapter 22: Section 2

1. Chapter 22: Section 2 The Factory System

2. Terms to Know • Tenements • Cramped, shabby apartment buildings where workers lived during the Industrial Revolution in England.

3. Main Idea • New lifestyles and living conditions grew out of the Industrial Revolution as society began to change.

4. How Machines Affected Work • Introduction of steam-powered machinery made work easier to do. • Instead of spending several years as an apprentice learning a trade. • A person could learn to perform a task/operate a machine in a few days. • Employers discovered women and children could operate machines as efficiently as men. • Hired young men and women rather than older, skilled people. • Women/Children: Did not have set working habits • Women/Children: Did not expect high wages.

5. How Machines Affected Work • Older, skilled workers often found themselves unemployed. • 1) Machines replaced their abilities as weavers or spinners. • 2) Women and children were cheaper laborers. • To make up for their lost income • Many sent their children to look for work in textile factories.

6. The Wage System • Domestic System (working at home) • Workers had usually worked unsupervised • turned over finished products once a week • Paid for the number of items completed • Factories • Instead of working on a product from finish to end. • Each worker performed only a small part • Dozens/hundreds of laborers worked in the same room • Owners paid their workers based on the number of hours worked • Or amount of good produced.

7. The Wage System • Several factors determined workers’ wages • 1) Costs of production • If the cost of land or capital increased, the owners lowered wages. • 2) Number of workers available affected wages • Oversupply of workers brought the wages down • Wages rose when there were not enough workers to do a particular job. • 3) What they were going to make at other kinds of work. • Early textile factories wanted young women to work. Therefore they offered more money then household servants

8. The Wage System • Men received higher wages then women. • The London clothing trades in Great Britain • Men were paid as much as twice what women earned. • It was generally thought • “women went to work merely to add a little something to their families income.” • However, a woman was sometimes the only wage earner for her family.

9. Lives of Factory Workers • Factory workers and rules they had to follow • Arrive at the factory on time • Could eat or take breaks only at set times • Could only leave with permission • Worked weather it was hot or cold, summer or winter, day or night. • Breaking any rules result in: • Heavy fines • Pay cuts • Even job loss

10. Lives of Factory Workers • Factories • Cold and damp in winter • Steamy in summer • Sanitary facilities were poor • Machines did not have safety devices • No Workers Compensation if injured • 14 hours a day, six days a week

11. The Lives of Factory Workers • Workers lived in shabby apartment buildings called • Tenements • A dozen people might be crammed into a single room • “It was very dark inside. The window-panes many of them were broke and stuffed with rags… the smell was so foul as almost to knock the two men down… they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the… wet brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up.”

12. Development of the Middle Class • As industries and cities grew, a new, well-educated middle class thrived. • Bankers • Manufacturers • Merchants • Lawyers • Doctors • Members of the middle class served in • Management or other types of administrative jobs • Based on economic standing • The middle class represented a social stepladder